Word: contrivedness
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FOR ALL THEIR VAUNTED POLITICAL clout, elderly Americans responded with an odd silence last summer when Republicans announced that they planned to whack $270 billion out of anticipated Medicare spending over the next seven years. That is partly because the G.O.P. had contrived until recently to keep the details secret...
The reactionary nature of this contrived rebellion is crystallized in the modern reaction against political correctness on college campuses. As Paul Loeb writes in his book Generation at the Crossroads, "Students [now] justify any sort of heedless, bullying, mean-spirited, or simply apolitical behavior as a way of combating 'liberal...
Inevitably, from time to time Bergman strays from eerie unreality into sheer unbelievability. His hitchhikers haven't been aboard for two minutes before they've revealed their whole sexual history; while one couple crashes their car, jauntily introduces themselves and then settles down to hearty physical abuse in the back...
When Bill Clinton met with Newt Gingrich, Bob Dole and the rest of the congressional leadership last week, the mood was cordial, the atmosphere so thick with promises to work together you could almost forget that not long ago the G.O.P. revolutionaries were ready to set up guillotines on the...
After Bob Dole upset George Bush in the 1988 Iowa caucuses, the Vice President's troops contrived a desperation strategy to provoke Dole to anger. "Make him blow, revive his 'hatchet man' image, make him seem too meanspirited to be President," recalls a top Bush aide who is now advising...